The website, which was popular in 2004 as a rival to Snapfish and Flickr, is surprisingly still around today, although it changed hands a few times: from CNET to American Greetings and is now firmly under the control of the original founders. The site is still desperately clinging to life and hosting about 690 million photos today, but all that will soon change.

When December 1st, 2012 rolls around, users of Webshots are advised to try and remember their password before their pictures get deleted permanently. Webshots, who will be turning into the new photo aggregator called "Smile" announced in their FAQ that if users don't update their account, their pictures will be lost to the sands of internet time.

This has understandably made users angry, especially since many of them probably signed up with old email addresses that they don't use any more or that don't exist. Even if they sent out a warning email, users who have since abandoned their 2004 email addresses wouldn't get the memo and would lose the opportunity to save their pictures. While some of their pictures are probably better off being deleted, Webshots should really come up with a better way to notify MIA users about the upcoming change.

However, with all the internet buzz surrounding the website, perhaps former users will see the news, update their account accordingly, and their precious memories will be saved to a more reliable format: like an external hard drive.